CfP: Cultural studies in the context of object-oriented philosophy and object-oriented ontology

You are encouraged to submit articles for the new issue of “Cultural
Studies Review” (“Przegląd Kulturoznawczy”) devoted to cultural studies in
the context of object-oriented philosophy and object-oriented ontology
(OOP, OOO).

The last decades in critical humanities elapsed under the banner of a
return to materiality. The ecological crisis, tensions within the
capitalist system, and exhaustion of the energy of poststructuralism have
forced a reassessment of the notion of matter. While the twentieth-century
critical theory organized the political debate around epistemological
issues, the materialistic tendencies, more and more strongly present in the
humanities of the twenty-first century, are currently re-introducing
metaphysics into the area of political reflection.

It appears that none of the new trends in materialistic reflection have
generated as many controversies as speculative realism in its various
guises (object-oriented philosophy or object-oriented ontology). The third
issue of “Cultural Studies Review” will be an occasion to use the
dictionary of object-oriented philosophy in the field of cultural studies.
Ever since speculative realism emerged in the area of contemporary
philosophy—largely as social ferment on scientific blogs—its findings,
insights, and methodological suggestions have been quickly applied to
reflections on technology, material culture, and contemporary art. The
dOCUMENTA festival (12) has established object-oriented philosophy as one
of the most significant trends in contemporary reflections on the aesthetic
experience and on the condition of the art market. Jussi Parikka and Levi
Bryant find use for OOO/OOP in the archeology of media and in the
contemporary studies on technology. OOO/OOP appears as a methodological
basis in reflections on such different phenomena as the ecological crisis,
immaterial labor, algorithmization, or post-digital aesthetics. Its
emphasis on the study of relationships allows cultural studies to readdress
the issue of agency, work, and ideology.

Speculative realism appears to be the most radical and promising attempt at
transcending poststructuralism. The sources of this impulse may be sought
in works by A. Badiou or Q. Meillasoux, and inspiration may be found in the
works of, among others, M. Heidegger and, notably, of K. Twardowski.
Speculative realists (including A. Toscano, G. Harman, L. R. Bryant, I.
Bogost, R. Brassier) refute the basic relationship that has organized
philosophical debates concerning our thinking of reality from the times of
Kant: the subject-world relationship. They introduce the concept of the
object, which can be man, Pegasus, or an atom. The anti-humanism of
speculative realism thus allows us to locate this project within
broadly-understood posthumanism, in close proximity to the actor-network
theory or STS (science, technology and society studies); however, its
(seemingly?) nihilistic provenance generates a number of critical opinions,
which, in the anti-humanism of OOP, discern the dangerous anti-critical
turn reproducing the spirit of contemporary cognitive capitalism. The
criticism of object-oriented philosophy resonates strongly in contemporary
feminism, queer theory, new materialism, and psychoanalysis in the context
of debates on the political nature of the theories and the concept of
agency.

In the next issue of “Cultural Studies Review” we would like to discuss the
proposals of object-oriented philosophy in the context of cultural studies.
We are interested in the following issues: